WASHINGTON -- Next week, the Supreme Court will hear two of the most significant cases slated for oral argument this side of the New Year.
Monday's argument in Zivotofsky v. Clinton stems from a disagreement between Congress and the executive branch over the status of Jerusalem. Menachem Zivotofsky was born in West Jerusalem to American parents in 2002. They went to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to obtain a passport for the newborn and asked that his country of birth be listed as Israel. The State Department refused, writing in Jerusalem instead. But a few months before the boy was born, Congress had passed a law telling the State Department to list Israel as the country of birth on the passports of all Jerusalem-born U.S. citizens who request it.
The Court must first decide whether it should even enter this spat between the two political branches. Only if it agrees to enter the thicket will the justices determine which branch should prevail.
On Tuesday, the justices will hear United States v. Jones. The D.C. police and the FBI thought that nightclub owner Antoine Jones was trafficking cocaine. They obtained a warrant, valid for 10 days, to track his movements with a GPS device placed on his car. They failed, however, to install the GPS until the 11th day and then used the tracking data to obtain evidence that led to Jones' conviction.
The question before the Court, then, is whether the police violated Jones' Fourth Amendment rights by putting a GPS device on his car without a valid warrant or his consent. Two federal appeals courts, the D.C. Circuit and the 7th Circuit, have already split on the issue. The justices will resolve the question in what will likely be a landmark decision for privacy rights in the digital age.
Watch the video for a summary of the issues, and come back to HuffPost after each argument to find out which way the justices seem to be leaning.